Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Some More Creative Wakes and Funeral Selfies

I haven't updated here in a while, but today I read about New Orleans socialite Mickey Easterling who left specific instructions to be propped up with a cigarette and champagne flute at her wake.


From that link I found that a couple months ago a boxer named Christopher Rivera Amaro was posed in his boxing garb so that visitors could take pictures with him:


In addition to these photography-friendly funerals, there is also a "trend" of funeral selfies that has been making a lot of people uncomfortable lately (examples shown on this Tumblr dedicated to selfies taken at funerals), a phenomenon parodied in The Hangover III. 






For those who don't already know, though, this isn't necessarily a modern phenomenon.  When photography was less ubiquitous and more expensive, post-mortem photography--with both corpse and living relatives posed in life-reminiscent situations--might be the only opportunity a less-affluent family would have to get a picture of a recently-deceased loved one.


In the case of my own family, I found photographs of dead people dating from the 1970s and 1980s, so it's not like it ever really went away.

So taking pictures posing with the deceased or at their funerals really isn't as weird as people would have it, it's just done for the exact opposite reason:  While early on people would take pictures of their dead relatives because there were few opportunities to get pictures of them to begin with, people take pictures of their dead relatives now because photography is so ubiquitous that there are few contexts in which people aren't willing to take pictures.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

DIY Funerals Get A Boost

Today I was checking out Facebook and saw that there is a growing movement for DIY at-home funerals.  Check it out:

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Become a Tree

I literally haven't posted here in years... wow!  Oddly enough, it's not because I forgot of its existence, but I just haven't had the time to be dilligent about finiding new and interesting ways to die... but here's one from BigThink:

This Awesome Urn will Turn You Into a Tree After You Die

The urn is made of biodegradeable materials, such as coconut shell, and is filled with peat and soil.  There's a tree seed in it, and when the urn is buried, it grows into a tree.  Also it looks kind of like a coffee cup:

Friday, October 14, 2011

Mushroom Burial Suit


Jae Rhim Lee explains her suit seeded with mushrooms that eat the toxic byproducts of burial. It's an art piece, but it's still pretty cool!

From TED.com.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Liquify your dead body.

Liquify your dead body... for the Earth.

I'm in class so I don't have much to say about it right now, just... wow.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Clown Funeral

This is old news, very old news, but I found it while I was looking at something else and it's new news to me, so you get it anyway:
This is the funeral of Norman Thompson, a.k.a. "Boppo," who was a member of a clown troupe which visited children in hospital burn units.  He was honored with a clown funeral.

From Quigley's Cabinet.